That grand old meteorologist T.S. Eliot was right: April is the cruellest month. Here, in Ontario, after a siege of sleet and snow, there was one day this week that revived my slender and decaying hopes of global warming. As I write this, however, the wind is howling, the prevaricators at Environment Canada have pledged that the temperature will rise to a high of 2 degrees, and a few ducks silly enough to be still outdoors look to be wearing survival suits over their native eiderdown.
The news is chilly, too. The turmoil of Iraq and the anxiety of SARS do little to fire the spirit or warm the mind. It is a cool time in a mean world.
I had heard somewhere that the Progressive Conservatives were holding a leadership race, but this is a rumour so vague and wispy it is impossible to confirm. Surely, if they were, Canada would be much hotter.
Time was, when the Tories went about the business of selecting one to lead them, it was like an epidemic of spontaneous combustion. Tory leadership conventions had more radiation than solar flares, and candidates' debates were officially declared fire hazards. The backrooms of the Tory Party were friction pits of strife and contention.
Alas, no more. If there is a leadership race, it is being conducted in some gelid zone of Zen calm, and its participants are determined, maybe in deference to Kyoto and its fantasies of global meltdown, to generate neither heat nor light. There are no Diefenbakers among them. The great populist could bust a thermometer by just walking into a room.
Shall we hope then for warmth from the Liberals? Not likely. We do know there is a Liberal leadership contest, but the air-conditioning has been set on maximum since the day Jean Chrétien growled out the news of his reluctant departure, a farewell that was geologic in its duration and glacial in its progress. Some of the Ice Ages were both shorter and warmer than Mr. Chrétien's goodbye.
Very mild cheers then for John Manley and Sheila Copps. They have been good enough to signal that there is motion yet in the Liberal Party, and that running for its leadership and, consequently, the office of prime minister, does not require a pledge of secrecy and a vow of silence. Mr. Manley lobbed a small insult at Ms. Copps this week. Now, the Finance Minister is not Oscar Wilde. Indeed, he is not John Crosbie. He has neither the wit of the former, nor the turbulent invention of the latter. As a polemicist, he is the Perry Como of Canadian politics.
But he tried. He said of the leadership race: "I think it's great that Sheila's in it," which was very wide of him, but added, as if in repentance of his first thought, "but I don't think anyone seriously considers her a contender for the job of prime minister."
Unsurprisingly, Ms. Copps took modest umbrage at the assessment, summoning the spirit of John Crosbie - always a welcome phantom at any partisan spat - and offered that Mr. Manley was, like her former Tory nemesis, part of the "old boys' network." She muttered something about a "glass ceiling" and, more or and less, that was that.
Not much, I grant you, but something. They may have been feigning contention - more half-hearted potshots instead of Exocets - but it'll do. There is a race and two people, for certain, are in it. But is there not another candidate? I don't think so. There is certainly no evidence that there is another candidate.
Once upon a time, long ago and far away, there was talk of someone else - Paul Merton? Saul Martin? - I believe he used to be a cabinet minister. There was a guy whom everyone thought that, when Mr. Chrétien announced he was resigning, was going to enter this race - I seem to recall that most people felt he would automatically be the front-runner. But Merton or Martin - maybe it's Pierre Berton I'm thinking of, the long winter does addle the neurons - I haven't heard of him in a dog's age.
Whoever he is, I don't think he's running any more. Could be he's gone to work for CSIS, the spy agency. CSIS is very big on anonymity, silence and seclusion. Whoever he is, or was, he's not around any more. Because if this guy's campaigning to be prime minister, somebody's channelled Howard Hughes into the backrooms of the Liberal Party. A hermit is running the first stealth campaign in the history of our country. David Orchard, in the invisible Tory campaign, is generating more publicity. David Orchard is Madonna compared to this guy.
A quick test: If there is another candidate for the Liberal leadership, when was the last time you saw him or heard him? Was he saying anything? Was he moving? Could you detect any warmth?
I thought so. Neither could I. Leadership politics is a cold ground.
Rex Murphy is a commentator with CBC-TV's The National and host of CBC Radio One's Cross-Country Checkup.